​Blog

I'm truly on a mission to help you live healthier. I keep sharing things that have worked in my own life. Some of you know how jazzed I've been about my "miracle breakfast." I started eating this when I realized that I wasn't getting enough fiber in my diet, even with eating whole grains and lots of veggies. (We should be getting between 30 to 50 grams of fiber a day. Average Americans only get 8-15 grams.)

I knew I had to make some changes. I realized that I was often leaving the house with a Kashi bar and not eating a full breakfast. So I switched to a really healthy bowl of oatmeal with lots of yummy stuff.

​​If you’re part of the over 60% of people who make New Years resolutions with good intentions but are unable to keep them, this newsletter is for you.You mean well, you try hard, but life gets in the way.Think of a resolution as a seed that gets planted. We have an idea. We want to make a change in our life. We’re excited. We set goals, make promises, tell ourselves this year we’ll eat our vegetables, exercise more, be kinder. We truly mean these things. Yet for many of us by April we’re back to our same old habits. What has happened?I think that we have forgotten to nurture the seed. No one expects a seed to grow without water and sun. And no one expects the seed we plant today to turn into a full grown tree tomorrow. Growth and change take time.When you make a resolution, ask yourself these questions:

What am I going to do to nurture this dream?

How often do I have to metaphorically water it?

What environment will it grow best in?

How many weeks will it take for my resolution to take root?

How will I know when the tiny seed grows roots?

When will my seedling send up shoots through the soil?

What will my plant (resolution) look like when it’s fully grown?

Take time to answer these questions. It may require many hours. Pay attention to how easy or difficult this process is. Write your answers down. If you’re not able to do this, you might want to pick a new year’s resolution that is easier to implement.With nurturing and care and love our dreams will take form. Do get in touch with me if you need help in this process.Wishing you a healthy, happy and prosperous New Year!

Bonnie

"With time and patience the mulberry leaf becomes a silk gown" ~Chinese Proverb

​I traveled to New Orleans a few weeks ago. I knew I had truly arrived when our Lyft driver said "How ya doing, Miss Bonnie?" I had made a lunch reservation and when we arrived I was greeted with "Welcome, Miss Bonnie." On a shuttle bus to Mardi Gras World the driver asked if this was my first time in New Orleans. When I said it was my second, he replied "Welcome Home."

New Orleans is a great place to travel to. The food, music, warm weather, welcoming people make it so special. Being there feels like getting a big hug.

But I want to tap into something deeper. The importance of social connection. Not just because it makes us feel good -- although this is important. But because it makes us healthier.

Here's what the experts have to say:

In the personal health section of the New York Times, Jane Brody has been reporting on research that loneliness can have a negative impact on health "by raising levels of stress hormones and inflammation, which in turn can increase the risk of heart disease, arthritis, Type 2 diabetes and dementia."

Dr. Dhruv Khullar, a physician and researcher at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York writes "A wave of new research suggests social separation is bad for us. Individuals with less social connection have disrupted sleep patterns, altered immune systems, more inflammation and higher levels of stress hormones."

And research presented at the 2017 Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association shows that "Loneliness and social isolation may represent a greater public health hazard than obesity, and their impact has been growing and will continue to grow."

Here is "Miss Bonnie's" take on all this:

Know that no matter what, you are not alone. Just take a minute and breathe that in. Say it to yourself. Write it in your journal. Breathe it in with each breath.

Reach out. I mean this truly. I am here for you. Send me an email. Schedule an appointment. Acupuncture can help you connect more fully with yourself. I do think it can be an antidote to loneliness. And I will be with you, listen to you, open my heart.

If I'm not the right person to help you, reach out to someone who is. I know there is someone out there who will be there for you. In all the ups and downs of my life (and there have been many), there was always someone. Sometimes it was a friend, sometimes a medical professional. Sometimes it was a favorite singer/song writer, a favorite author. A movie that moved me to tears.

Be expansive in your outreach. We don't always know when/where/who what we need will come from. And sometimes it arrives from unexpected quarters. Just trust that it will be there.

Practice making connections when you are out in the world. Take the extra moment to say hello to your mail carrier, the wait staff at your favorite coffee shop or restaurant, the neighbor walking their dog.

Join a community of like-minded folks. Take a yoga or Qi Gong class. If it's your thing, go to a house of worship. Whether you are a believer or not, the spirit is always there for you.

One of the reasons that I love Eastern Medicine is because of its emphasis on connection. In the 5 element/5 organ system that we use no one organ/element exists on its own. The energy of the liver feeds the heart, the heart energy feeds the spleen, the spleen energy feeds the lungs, the lung energy feeds the kidneys, the kidney energy feeds the liver. The cycle is completed and begins again.

​I love this article from my colleague,Katherine Golub, career / business / leadership coach and consultant in Western Mass. She teaches us how to focus on the postitive! To learn more about her work, visit www.CoreBrillianceAcademy.com

What are you dreaming of for the new year? Did you make a resolution, set an intention, choose a word?At the beginning of every year, I like to choose one word to focus my attention for the year. This year, my word is "Foundation."

No matter how you set your intentions, January is a time of fresh starts and new beginnings for many people. Do you want to learn how to be more confident, more present, or more creative? Perhaps you want to take better care of yourself. Whatever it is, if you’re like most people, I'm guessing that there's probably some new habit that you’d like to develop this year.

Most of us aren’t taught how we form habits or how we can change them, and because of that, developing new habits can feel daunting. I'm happy to tell you that, in fact, developing new habits and strengths can be simple.Instead of working super hard to fight against old behaviors, it can be much more useful to just take in the good.

What do I mean by “taking in the good?”In Hardwiring Happiness, Rick Hanson writes that the most effective path to developing emotional habits or strengths such as gratitude, presence, and confidence is to notice when you're already engaged in these habits and then to feel how you feel in your body. He calls this process “taking in the good.”With repeated, intense, and prolonged mental focus on what’s working, you grow new synapses and change how your DNA functions so that you literally experience more of what works. For example, by noticing when you feel confident, you strengthen your ability to feel confident. When you notice yourself feeling focused, you increase your ability to focus. When you allow yourself to feel really good when you practice self-care (even if it’s just for five minutes), you increase the likelihood that you'll practice self-care again soon.

As human beings, we too often focus on what we don’t want to do or to feel. Unfortunately, focusing on what you don’t want makes it harder to develop the habits you do want. For example, trying to figure out how to be "not stressed" can stress you out, even more.The brain can't think in negatives. Don't think of a pink elephant. You can't do it, right? Every time you think about what you don't want, your focus goes to the negative, and you're more likely to replicate that. Instead, when you think about what you do want, you send your energy in that new, more generative direction.

So, what are the steps to taking in the good and building new habits?Your first step to cultivating new habits or strengths is to choose one or two to focus on. Rather than focusing on the habit you want to let go of, focus on the habit you want to cultivate. Keep in mind that your problem requires a matched solution. For example, if you struggle with the state in the left column, consider focusing on the habit or strength in the right column--• Exhaustion… Energy• Stagnation… Movement• Anxiety… Ease• Fear… Courage• Shame… Self-Compassion• Resistance… Curiosity• Withdrawal… Engagement• Scarcity… Gratitude• Frustration… Fulfillment• Stuckness… Forward Movement• Drivenness… Pleasure• Rejection… Belonging• Isolation… Connection• Grief… Love

Your next step is to notice moments in which you experience the habit or strength you desire. To develop the habits and strengths we desire—such as trust, humor, and ease—we need to notice when we experience these positive states. Often, we’re already engaging in the actions or experiencing the states that we want to make habitual, but we’re not paying attention. By paying attention to when we are acting and feeling the ways we want, we strengthen our ability to act or feel this way even more.If you don’t naturally find yourself experiencing your desired emotions, you can remember past experiences, imagine the future you desire, or celebrate the good in the lives of others.

Once you create a positive experience, allow yourself to really savor the moment and experience it in your body. Sense the experience fully in your body, taking in as many sensory aspects as possible—sight, sound, touch, smell, taste, feeling, and thinking. Feeling the experience in your body helps it to sink in and create new connections in your brain. Like any new strength, your ability to focus your attention is like a muscle. It gets stronger the more you exercise it. Taking in positive experiences makes your brain “stickier” for them, which in turn increases the likelihood that you'll notice more positive experiences. That makes your brain even more sticky so that you notice positive experiences more. It's a feedback loop of positivity. This cycle makes it less and less likely for negative experiences to slip into your mind and affect your brain.

From now on, any time you experience a small win, seize the opportunity to celebrate. When you receive a compliment, take a deep breath, let it really soak in, and say thank you. Or cross off items off your to-do list as you complete them so that you have a picture of accomplishment. Or, at the beginning or end of each day, think of three things that you’re proud of, that you appreciate about yourself, or that brought you joy.

Focusing on what brings you joy ten times a day, fifteen seconds at a time only, takes a total of two and a half minutes. But it's one of the most powerful ways to change your brain and your life.​Whatever your hopes for the new year may be, I encourage you to gift yourself a few moments each day to take in the good. Not only is this a very effective way to cultivate new habits, but it’s also fun. I wish you all the best on your journey to building the habits you want!

Do you feel like you’re on go all the time? Do you feel the pressure of work, family and social obligations? We live in over-scheduled times. We have busy calendars and long to-do lists. You may be doing more and it may feel good for a little while. But take a moment to ask yourself if you are leading a truly meaningful and productive life.

From an Eastern perspective our culture focuses on the Yang side of life. Yang energy corresponds to activity, light, heat and daytime. It’s opposite, yin, corresponds to rest, darkness, sleep, cold, and nighttime.

These two types of energy are found in the autonomic nervous system (ANS), the system that operates mostly unconsciously and regulates many body functions such as heartbeat, respiration and digestion. The ANS consists of the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.

The Sympathetic Nervous System (your Yang energy) prepares your body for action when it senses danger by pumping adrenaline into your blood stream. During this “fight or flight” response, the following occurs:

Your heart rate increases

Your pulse and blood pressure go up

Small airways in your lungs open so that your body can take in more oxygen

Blood sugar and fats are released into your bloodstream giving your body more energy

The Parasympathetic Nervous System (your Yin energy) serves as a brake to this revved up energy. This “rest and digest” response slows things down in these ways:

Your heart rate slows to conserve energy

Your intestinal activity increases

Sphincter muscles in your GI tract relax

Both the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems are important. They are needed to balance one another as they perform opposite but necessary functions. However, we live in a stressful culture. Each stressor activates the sympathetic nervous system keeping our bodies in sympathetic overdrive. For many of us there is too much go, go, go and not enough rest.

Acupuncture treatments regulate the autonomic nervous system by releasing neurotransmitters and hormones, or in Eastern terms, balancing yin and yang. I find that patients go into a deeply relaxed state and report sleeping better after treatments. Over time pain decreases, digestion improves, anxiety is diminished. This leads to improved health, relationships and life choices.

"One of the great things about a treatment with Bonnie is afterwards I feel very focused, clear and centered. Each treatment also has a calming effect and allows me to sleep better."

​Halloween candy reminds me of a theory that I have been pondering over the last few months. I call it the "Twizzler effect:"

It goes back to the Twizzler licorice that I ate as a kid -- those strands of licorice twisted around each other. In my mind, they represent two aspects of any situation. One strand represents the aspects of life that you cannot change. If it's raining outside, you can't stop the rain.

But, there is also another factor – your relationship to the first aspect. This is the second strand.

You can’t stop the rain, but you can open an umbrella and stay dry. You can appreciate that the rain helps to grow the fruits and vegetables that you eat. You can jump in puddles or curl up with a good book. You can look for rainbows.

The Twizzler effect applies to your health. You are aging. At some point in your life, you are bound to feel the effects of illness and disease. (I say this so you don’t feel bad or blame yourself when this happens.) But, this is only the first strand. It’s not the whole picture. There is hope.

Hope exists in the second strand, the things that you do to care for yourself. This includes the foods you fill your body with, the thoughts you fill your mind with, the people you surround yourself with and the healers you go to. It’s this second strand that you have control over.

By focusing your energy on the things you can change, you can create a space of health and well-being. You can find deep acceptance of who you are AND make conscious shifts to become the person you want to be.

My life’s work is helping people reclaim their power to heal. That’s right. Whatever your situation, however much pain you may be in, you have that power.

When our lives go awry; when we get sick or suffer loss, it’s natural to think that we have no power. No one plans on pain. No one plans on illness. It can be devastating when we feel that our bodies have betrayed us.

That’s how I felt many years ago when I was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I ate well and exercised. It was hard to understand how I could get so sick. Also, there was no clear path to recovery.

To find my power, I needed to look outside of my current life experience. I needed another way of understanding the world. I found it with acupuncture.

Here are some of the secrets I learned:

The body has an innate ability to heal.

Illness is an imbalance in the body trying to correct itself.

There are always ways to bring the body back into balance.

An energetic system of meridians runs through the entire body. Seem unbelievable? We know each cell has protons and electrons, which have positive and negative charges.

What we eat, how we breathe, the way we move, what we think all have a significant impact on how we feel.

Various seemingly unrelated symptoms in the body may be connected. The body functions as a whole.

Whether you have a specific diagnosis, are feeling lousy for no apparent reason, or pulled a muscle, you deserve to feel listened to and receive treatment.

​Our health consists of habits formed over a lifetime. What we eat, how we move, the thoughts we think -- all of these contribute to the ways our bodies respond to our environment. We become more powerful as we consciously choose and create these habits. What better new year's gift to give yourself than creating one new healthy habit.

The following steps will take you through the process of choosing and integrating one habit that will enhance your life in a positive way and become part of the foundation for a healthy balanced life.

Create Your Activity1. Choose WiselyChoose something you want to do, rather than something you think you should do. Choose something that you want to do tomorrow and also three years from now. Choose an activity that you can do given the present circumstances and resources of your life. If, for example, you want to join a gym make sure there is one that you can easily get to and that is open at hours that are convenient for you. Make sure that you can afford the cost of membership. I believe that each of us already knows of at least one thing we can do to improve our lives. If you have a long list of things, choose the one that feels most meaningful to you.

2. Think Small, Stay SimpleBegin with a small, achievable task rather than elaborate, unattainable goal. Focus on the task itself. If you dream of writing a novel, you might want to begin by setting aside a certain amount of time each day to write. Focus on the activity, rather than the goal. Goals are admirable, but generally achievable only if we focus on the activities that are necessary for their fruition. Thoreau said, “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.”

3. Be CreativeSometimes we are in situations where we are unable to do the things we want to. Here’s where creativity comes into play. If your activity is to spend an hour each week at the ocean but you live in landlocked Iowa, you might get a video of ocean scenes, a CD with the sound of waves breaking on the sand, suntan lotion and some shells.

Develop Intention4. Commit to the ActivityCommit to spending at least one hour each week on this activity for the next three months. This can be 10 minutes everyday, 20 minutes three days a week or one hour once a week. If you cannot or do not want to commit to one hour a week, choose something else. If you are already committed to spending time each week that supports a balanced life, than commit to bringing more attention to that time. (See Step 10.)

5. Write It DownThere is something about the act of writing something down that solidifies it. It serves both to define the action and as a symbol of intent. There is a shift that happens when something goes from idea to tangible form. There are many ways of writing something down. You can do it very privately, on a folded up piece of paper or in a journal. You can write something and put it on your mirror or refrigerator. Just as the action itself comes from an inner, personal space so will the writing of it. Do what feels right to you.

6. BeginIf this activity is worth doing, it is worth doing now (or at least within this week.) This piece is often the most difficult. Waiting for the perfect moment may mean putting off something indefinitely. Just start now.

7. Begin AgainNone of us are perfect. Our lives are complicated. Stuff unexpectedly happens. So if you are unable for whatever reason to do your chosen activity for a day, a week or even a month, begin again. Learn from your experience. Sometimes it takes a few false starts to develop a good habit. In the long run you are better off starting again then giving up on something important to you in your life. I once read that the people who succeed the most are also those who fail the most. Winston Churchill said, “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”

8. Get HelpBring into your life people who support you in your journey towards health whether it’s a friend, a medical care provider or a significant other. Sometimes we need help. Intervention is often necessary to keep our bodies healthy.

9. Reward YourselfTaking care of yourself is an accomplishment. Often our busy lives do not support choices that keep us healthy. Acknowledge the time and effort put into your new habit. Congratulate yourself. Tell your friends. Go wild!

10. Bring Intention to Your New HabitRather than going through the motions, use your time each week to connect more deeply with yourself. Good health is a sensory experience. If you are eating healthier take this opportunity to fully taste your food. If you are spending an hour each week listening to music or looking at art, fully see or fully hear. Whatever you have chosen to do be sure to notice your breath. We cannot live for more than a few minutes without breathing. The quality of our breath, the way we breathe, to a large extent determines the quality of our lives. Whatever you are doing you are also breathing. As you embrace your newly chosen activity, breathe deeply into your lower abdomen.

GO BACK TO STEP ONEWhether you have successfully integrated a new, healthy habit into your life or have experienced three months of hell, or most likely, are somewhere in between, go back to step one. Learn from your accomplishments as well as your mistakes. You now have the advantage of experience in this process.